CASTLE RETURNS TO CONVENTION, GENEVA AND OTHERWISE

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

U.S. Rep. Michael N. Castle's uncharacteristic show
of solidarity with his Republican leadership in the U.S.
House of Representatives did not last long.

Days after bringing John A. Boehner, the conservative
majority leader, to Delaware on Saturday for a campaign
fund raiser, Castle reverted to his more habitual
contrariness, this time over the Geneva Conventions.

Before a compromise was announced Thursday, Castle
broke with the Bush administration and the House
leadership to side with three Republican senators, all
with military backgrounds, to insist that suspected
terrorists be treated according to the Geneva
Conventions, international rules of warfare that protect
prisoners of war from torture as well as lesser
indignities.

Castle took his stand Tuesday in a letter he wrote
with U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut
Republican who is a fellow moderate, to the House
leadership to support the position of U.S. Sens. John
McCain, well-known as a prisoner of war in Vietnam,
Lindsay Graham, a former JAG officer, and John Warner,
the Senate Armed Services Committee chair who was a
secretary of the navy.

The issue arose as part of the consideration of
legislation designed to set up military tribunals for
terrorism trials after the U.S. Supreme Court in June
struck down a system devised by the Bush administration.
The president is urging passage before the Congress
leaves town next week for the campaign season.

"[We] ask that any legislation considered by the
House ensure the United States fully maintains its
commitment to the Geneva Convention," Castle and Shays
wrote. "It is vital we not equivocate or waiver on our
commitment to treating those in U.S. custody in the same
manner we would expect our own citizens be treated."

It seemed so much more typical of Castle than his
side-by-side routine with Boehner, who voted against
Castle's signature stem cell research bill, displayed a
comfort with un-Castle-like polar politics by accusing
Democrats last week of coddling terrorists, and even
needled Castle as being "a little squishy from time to
time."

About all the two appeared to have in common was
respect for one other's lawmaking skills, observed while
serving together on the House Education & the Workforce
Committee, and a mutual desire to stay in the majority.

It probably was not accidental that no photographs of
Castle and Boehner together at the fund raiser seem to
have surfaced, not in a place that takes to heart the
"middle" in being a "Middle Atlantic" state.

What makes Castle a maverick in Washington usually
makes him mainstream at home, as his position on the
Geneva Conventions shows.

Although the Democrats largely have been content to
stay on the sidelines while the Republicans dealt with
their split, Castle's position turned out to be in line
with key Delaware Democrats when they were asked about
it.

The state Democrats' federal candidates -- U.S. Sen.
Thomas R. Carper and Dennis Spivack, the congressional
nominee facing Castle -- both are Vietnam-era veterans
who favored the McCain-Warner-Graham approach.
Republican Jan C. Ting, who is running against Carper,
said he had not formulated a position.

"For a country to make its own interpretation of what
is and is not permissible turns into a slippery slope,"
Spivack said.

U.S. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Democrat who is not
on the ballot this year, also was in step with the
others. As he said a week ago during an interview on
CNN, "Look, there are those extraordinary circumstances
where, God forbid, we have someone and our CIA guy knows
they've got an atom bomb somewhere, and he uses
extraordinary methods.

"You don't make international laws to accommodate
that extraordinary circumstance. You have our domestic
law exonerate that person."